Waukegan mother admits she killed 6-year-old daughter

A Waukegan woman on the verge of going to trial with an insanity defense abruptly changed course Monday and pleaded guilty to murdering her 6-year-old daughter.

Nelly Vazquez-Salazar, 27, will face a maximum of 30 years in prison when she returns to court Jan. 31 to be sentenced by Lake County Circuit Judge John Phillips.

On April 7, 2008, Vazquez-Salazar stabbed her daughter Evelyn Vazquez a total of 11 times in the neck, face and arms in the Waukegan apartment they shared.

Waukegan police who questioned Vazquez-Salazar the day of the killing said she originally told them her daughter was possessed by a demon and had tried to kill her.

Police said Vazquez-Salazar told them she had awakened around 4 a.m. and found her daughter sitting on her chest while clutching a large butcher knife.

The girl said she was going to kill her, Vazquez-Salazar told police, so she grabbed the knife and stabbed the child repeatedly in self-defense.

Vazquez-Salazar told police she was concerned the child had been possessed because she had recently begun sleepwalking.

Police were called to the scene when Vasquez-Salazar ran to a neighbor's apartment bleeding from the wrists and said she had tried to kill herself.

Police and medical personnel found Evelyn's body next door in her apartment, lying next to a picture of the Virgin Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus that had been slashed with a knife.

Vazquez-Salazar was expected to raise an insanity defense in a trial that was supposed to start before Phillips on Monday.

But she agreed to plead guilty after prosecutors offered her a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison instead of the possible life term she would have faced if convicted after the trial.

As in all cases of first-degree murder, Vazquez-Salazar will have to serve 100 percent of the sentence Phillips imposes before she is eligible for parole.

Vazquez-Salazar is being held on $5 million bond.